In current standards for mobile telecommunication, especially 3GPP long term evolution (LTE), wireless communication is possible up to a speed of the user equipment of about 350 km per hour.
Especially the handover mechanism does not work properly for user equipments being moved faster than 350 km per hour, for example in a plane or a train. According to the LTE standard, handovers for user equipments with such a high movement speed can only be performed from one cell of a base station to another cell served by the same base station. A handover from a first cell served by a first base station to a second cell served by a second base station is not possible for user equipments with such high movement speeds.
K. Dimou et al. investigate in “Handover within 3GPP LTE: Design Principles and Performance” (2009-09-23) the performance of the handover procedure within 3GPP LTE in terms of HO failure rate and the delay of the whole procedure. System level simulations within a typical urban propagation environment, with different User Equipment (UE) speeds, cell radii and traffic loads per cell are disclosed.